Harsh Realities
by Archer2
Summary: This is the story of one shinobi's life and how he influenced the Naruto world, for better or for worse. Warnings: Language, Violence, Sexual Situations, Original Characters, Alternate Universe, Self Insert, SI OC, First Person Point of View.
1. Chapter One: An End to Boyhood

**Harsh Realities**  
By Archer2

**Summary: **This is the story of one shinobi's life and how he influenced the Naruto world, for better or for worse.

**Warnings: **Language, Violence, Sexual Situations, Original Characters, Alternate Universe, Semi Self Insert, First Person Point of View.

**Disclaimer:** Obviously, I don't own the Naruto characters.

**Author's Note:** I have been reading a lot of self insert stories lately, and they fascinate me. The idea that some outside character could so irreparably change the timeline of a story is really interesting and it is a phenomenon that is only found in fan fiction. So, I wanted to write one for myself, except that I didn't want to have the main character first die and then be reborn into the world. Neither did I want them to have a reason to think they can change the future. Since these two aspects of the self insert genre weren't adhered to, I guess this story is only a partial self insert. I hope you all enjoy it. Please review with your thoughts.

Thank you.

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**Chapter One: An End to Boyhood**

My story is an odd one, this I freely admit. Nevertheless, my story is as true as I can remember and I vow to retell it as faithfully as possible. My story begins with me sitting alone in a park sandbox, burying my feet with a plastic trowel.

I was engrossed in my game, wanting to see what my legs would look like without my feet attached at the end of them. I still remember that detail, even to this day. I was so young back then that, by rights, I should have long ago forgotten the memory in favor of something else, but that doesn't change the fact that I can still bring to mind the sight of my small sun-browned toes poking through the white sand and the feel of the plastic trowel as I accidentally scrapped it against my leg in the midst of my digging.

Oh well. I have never claimed to be a master of what the mind chooses to retain and what it chooses to discard, but if I were to offer up a guess, I would say the reason why I remember that day so well, is because it was the last time that my mother was just a mother to me. After that day, my mother came to represent scary secrets that would continue to haunt me throughout my life; but at that time, I knew none this. I was just a little boy, playing in the sand on a beautiful autumn day. And so, is it any wonder that this last memory of my boyhood became so precious to me in the days that followed?

Anyway, after I completed my objective of burying my feet, I had a single moment to marvel at my work. I remember being disappointed with the outcome, because I still looked like I had feet at the ends of my legs, they just happened to be buried beneath the white sand of the sandbox. In frustration, I kicked my legs free of the sand and stood up.

Before I could leave the sandbox in favor of a new distraction, I was lifted from behind and settled against my mother's right hip. The action was so familiar to me, since it happened about a hundred times a day for as long as I could remember, that I did not struggle or fuss about my sudden change in altitude.

As my mother brushed my hair out of my face, I noticed that her eyes did not quite look at me, but drifted off behind me. Her distraction was so apparent that I even turned around to see what she was looking at, but I saw nothing out of the ordinary.

When I turned back around, my mother was looking down at me, frowning. At the time, I didn't know what I had done wrong, but now I know she had wanted me to act as a disguise to her distraction. She had probably wanted me to chatter at her about my games or about being hungry or any other subject worthy of notice by a four-year-old-boy, but I hadn't reacted as she had predicted and she was upset by this fact.

In my defense, I do not believe she planned very well on how to prompt my unconscious cooperation with her covert surveillance of the park. On any other day, she would have engaged me in conversation, but that day, she didn't and I took my behavioral cues from her. If she was quiet and distracted, then it was for a reason and I wanted to know what it was. So, whoever or whatever she had been watching, it was her fault that my actions had alerted them to the fact that my mother was aware of their presence.

I don't remember much about the walk home, except that I felt like I was in trouble and so I remained mutinously quiet the entire way home, which was probably the exact reaction my mother least desired from me. Oh well. I was a little boy and my mother was mad at me for no reason that I could see. Of course I pouted. Who wouldn't?

My next clear memory of that time, is of my mother hurriedly dressing me in the dark. I remember that she was anxious and that lead her to being rougher with me than normal and, as a result, she hurt me. I remember that I was about to start crying, but before I could, my mother clamped her hand over my mouth, with her fingers harshly digging into my cheeks, forcing my silence.

When she saw that I was now more startled by her aggression towards me than I was hurt, she leaned down close to me, so that her mouth was right beside my ear, and whispered, "Be quiet, Kenichi. Bad people are in the forest. We have to leave."

This entire experience was a first for me. Never before had my mother demonstrated such determination and violence towards me, and it was this attitude that more disturbed and frightened me than did the information about strangers being in the forest. So, what could I do but nod at my mother that I understood her warning and that I would comply with her demand for silence.

She rewarded me with a brisk, "Good boy," before removing her hand from my mouth and thus, leaving my cheeks aching from the strength of her fingers.

A moment later, my mother had finished dressing me in a dark blue long sleeved coverall jumpsuit, with shorts, and a T-shirt underneath. Socks, shoes, and a knitted black skullcap completed the outfit, although, the cap was too big and spun loosely on my head.

"I'm hot," I whined, momentarily forgetting that I was not allowed to speak as I pulled the cap from my head.

"Quiet," she snapped at me as she replaced the hat on my head. Then, as though in apology, she knelt before me and consciously changed her tone of voice to one more gentle and familiar to me, when she whispered, "You won't be hot for long, Kenichi. Do you remember our game when I run real fast and you ride on my back?"

Being under my mother's freshly reinforced geis of silence, I nodded my head in answer, still a little afraid of her.

"That's good," she whispered to me, with an anxious smile. "When I start running fast, the wind will make it cold and you'll cool off then. Now, just be patient a few seconds longer, and then we'll leave, before the bad people get here."

In any other situation, I would have been excited to hear that my mother was going to take me running with her. It was an activity that I enjoyed above all others, since when she got going, she could damn near fly. However, I had never been running with her in the dark and, with her acting so serious and worried, she had taken away any of sense of excitement from me and had replaced it with fear of these "bad people," who were hidden somewhere in the forest, and with fear of her.

Apprehensively, I waited for my mother to finish getting ready to leave. I watched her as she purposefully moved about our tiny home, collecting scrolls that she stuffed into special pockets on her vest. I had never seen the vest before, but it was hard and rough and it smelled musty with old sweat and mold.

Lastly, she put on a harness that I immediately recognized, even in the dark. It was a child-seat for me to ride against her back and it was designed like a backpack, with two shoulder straps and a third strap to circle around her belly, to help evenly distribute my weight along her hips.

"Come over here, Kenichi, and get in," she said as she knelt down beside me.

Even kneeling, she was taller than me, so I had to partially climb up her side to be able to step into the child-seat. She stabilized me as best she could, but this was a task that I had to do by myself, since she hadn't asked for me to get into the child seat before she put on the harness. However, I had ridden in this child seat many times before and this was an action I was very familiar with, so within a few seconds, I was in the seat and she was standing and adjusting the straps so that my weight was situated comfortably against her back to her satisfaction.

"Here we go," she whispered to me and, in a blink, we were out of our small home and running through the forest.

I know now that her ability to run like this, with a child strapped to her back no less, was a trademark of a someone who had been extensively trained as a shinobi, but, back then, I just thought her speed, agility, and stamina was normal and the only reason why I couldn't do it too, was because I was too little.

In the beginning of our escape, I tried to look around for the bad people in the forest, but I couldn't see anyone. My mother was running too fast and the wind hurt my eyes and made tears blur my vision when I looked over her shoulder, so I could only look behind us and, each time I did that, my mother told me to face front, because I was throwing off her balance. After the third such correction, I resigned myself to ignorance and settled down.

My mother ran for a long time, far longer than she had ever run with me before. Sometimes, she ran on the ground, sometimes in the trees, sometimes on the water, and sometimes she ran upside-down. I didn't like when she did the last one. It scared me and made me feel like I was going to fall out of the child seat, but, after a while, her pace evened out, so that there were no more sudden drops in elevation or sudden changes in our orientation.

If I had thought of it back then, I would have realized that my mother had most likely lost her pursuers during the course of our run, and was now just running for distance, but I didn't. Instead, the motion of her body became soothing, and I eventually fell asleep against her back, trusting that she would keep me safe. She was my mother and she loved me.

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**Author's Ending Note:** I hope you enjoyed the first chapter. Depending on reader response, I might continue to post this story. I do not see much reason to continue to write for an audience that isn't interested, so please let me know what you think. Criticisms and critiques are encouraged.

Thank you for reading.


	2. Chapter 2: The First Change

**Harsh Realities**  
By Archer2

**Summary: **This is the story of one shinobi's life and how he influenced the Naruto world, for better or for worse.

**Warnings: **Language, Violence, Sexual Situations, Original Characters, Alternate Universe, Semi Self Insert, First Person Point of View.

**Disclaimer:** They're not mine.

**Author's Note:** Here's chapter two. Please let me know what you think. Thanks for reading.

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******Chapter Two: The First Change  
**

Sometime during the night or early morning my mother had stopped running and set up a temporary camp on the ground beside the trunk of a swamp cypress tree, using the tree's buttressed roots and knobby pneumatophores to support a camouflaged tarp over our sleeping bodies; thereby, veiling us from our pursuers passing overhead in the treetops.

Later in my shinobi training, I would learn that this simplistic setup was a brilliant choice made by my mother, because the bad men, who were after us for undisclosed reasons, were searching for a runaway female shinobi backpacking an untrained child, her child. This meant that they expected sophisticated chakra traps and trip wires and containment seals from my mother, all in the hopes of protecting her precious son. As a consequence of all this shinobi detritus sprinkled about the forest, the bad men would have been able to use it as a breadcrumb trail leading right to our resting place. Once found, they could ambush us at their leisure.

Then again, my mother was a trained shinobi and who's to say that she hadn't laid false trails all through that forest, purposefully leading the bad men away from our chakra-free campsite, before she finally settled down against that cypress tree for the night? I sure can't say one way or another. I had slept through most of the run through the forest and, had I been awake, I would have probably been a very bored little boy, serving more as a distraction than as an asset to my mother's escape attempt. She most likely did something to me, like putting a soporific in my milk, before we left our home to make this desperate run for freedom.

All I know for sure is that I woke up the next morning in a strange place, with my head pillowed against my mother's bicep and staring at the weirdest woody growth I had ever seen. I had never seen a pneumataphore before, and to my undiscerning 4-year-old-eye, they looked like lumpy deformed teeth sprouting up from the soil and I was lying in a grove of them.

_"They're the Earth's teeth,"_ I remember thinking as I reached out to touch the closest growth to me. Even to this day, I still remember that thought, because it was so ignorant of the natural world that I find it funny now; but back then, I was deadly serious in my reasoning and I was convinced that, somewhere above me, I'd find the Earth's top teeth too.

When I had lifted my head off my mother's arm, I must have woken her, but I didn't know that at the time. Instead, I was too enthralled with my new discovery of the Earth's teeth that I had started to dig into the soil, trying to see how deep it went and to see if the Earth would notice me digging around in its gums. Obviously, the Earth never moved, but I found some fat worms for my troubles and they distracted me for a while as I made a squirming, oozing, worm-pile beside my knee.

Once I had a good-sized hole dug into the ground and a collection of four or so worms (I can't remember the exact number), I turned to look over at my mother, expecting her to still be sleeping. But she wasn't. She was watching me with this strange expression on her face that scared me. There was something about its aloof quality that made me freeze and stare back at her.

I watched her judging me while I kneeled in front of her, hands and clothes dirty from digging, and I slowly came to understand that my mother was, right at that moment, considering whether or not she still loved me.

Now, I know you readers are probably wondering how I came to think this thought, since nothing during my four years of life had ever predisposed me to this way of thinking. And, in a way, you're right. I was never hurt as a consequence of my mother's anger or malice and everything I had ever needed was given to me at the time that I needed it. So, why was I suddenly so convinced that my mother was weighing the pros and cons of my existence, as my worms undulated hastily away from me and back into the earth from whence they came, while I kneeled there, frozen and awaiting my mother's judgment?

Well, the answer's complicated and, no, I did not, nor could I, read her mind.

You see, when a person learns to control their chakra and then enhance its potency through training of the spirit, mind, and body, they become infinitely in tune with those aspects of themselves. So, when a female shinobi becomes pregnant, she knows long before a medical test can confirm or deny this fact and, depending on how she feels about her new state of being, dictates how her chakra reacts to the forming fetus.

Now, in the case of my mother, she had actively brought about my existence. In other words, she had copulated with a man at the time of her highest fertility and then immediately protected my tiny spark of life as soon as she sensed it igniting within her, with a cocoon of chakra, and she'd maintained this protection throughout the nine months of gestation. Then, upon delivery, she consciously extended that protection to my infant self and sustained that outpouring of chakra for the next four years of my life.

Thus, on that early morning beside the cypress tree, I knew my mother was reevaluating her decision to birth and raise me, because, for the first time in conscious memory, she stopped fueling the chakra protection around me and I felt its lack in every cell of my body.

I cried once the chakra cloak was gone from my body, my skin newly tender to the irritants of the elements. I cried because, even though my mother was right in front of me watching my reaction, she did not offer me comfort or explanation. I cried because I was still a baby and my world had suddenly changed without my understanding, and crying is what babies do when they require the attention of their parent.

For long minutes, I cried with my face buried in the mud, ignorant to the reasons why I felt like my skin had been abraded and my heart crushed within my chest. Eventually, my mother gathered me to her body and rocked me, whispering phrases like, "It's alright, Kenichi, you're fine," and "I should have weaned you years ago," and "Kenichi, this is ridiculous. Stop crying before you bring the bad men right to us."

But I could not stop crying. I had just lost an integral part of my connection to my mother, the most important person in my life, and that loss was physically painful as well as spiritually painful. Maybe, if she had prepared me beforehand, I might have reacted better, but I can't say that for sure. In any case, I had become a liability that my mother could ill afford, and she put me to sleep before I drew the bad men to our location and got us caught.

The next bit of time flows weirdly in my memory, like I had been drugged or something of that nature. I do not resent my mother taking this option over dealing with my emotional turmoil, because I understand the situation we were in and my wakefulness was not pertinent to our survival. Besides, the few times I was awake during this period of our escape, I had trouble coping with my mother's chakra withdrawal and was neigh on inconsolable.

My next clear memory is of coming fully awake while being bathed in the cold water of a rushing mountain stream. There were pine trees all around us and I could see the blue-gray mountains towering on either side.

"Momma," I said softly, but urgently. I had finally come to understand that I needed to be quiet more often than not, because these bad men were always just steps away from us, although, I barely remember them except as three ominous figures in black.

"I'm here Kenichi," my mother said back to me, scooping water over my naked body and rubbing at my skin.

"Where are we?" I asked, my eyes still drifting over the alien landscape. I had never seen a mountain before and pine trees were things that resided in picture books of far away places. The trees I was familiar with were the towering ancient deciduous trees growing in the river deltas of the south, where I assume I had been born.

"We're north of Earth Country," she'd answered. It was an answer that meant nothing to me at the time, but now I understand its significance. We had just left the last of the shinobi-controlled lands and were heading into the world beyond. She was telling me that maybe the bad men would stop chasing us now, since most shinobi rarely ever traveled so far afield.

But, back then, I didn't understand and so I asked, "Where's Earth Country?"

"In the north," was her reply.

Had I felt better at that time, I probably would have rolled my eyes at her answer and pestered her for more information, but since I was just coming out of being drugged for who knows how long, I could only think to say, "Oh. That's nice," and so that's what I said.

She finished cleaning me and then dressed me in clothing I did not recognize and had no idea where or how she came to be in possession of them. She first dressed me in dark gray long underwear and heavy socks. Then she covered the underwear with a thick leather outfit of and pullover and pants that had animal fur lining the inside. She put my black hat on my head and pulled up the hood of the pullover, tying straps in the front. Then, she put mittens on my hands and boots on my feet.

When I was dressed, I looked up at her and before I could ask why I had to wear such weird clothes, she explained to me that, in the north, it got cold and snowed sometimes, but it was always cold in the winter and winter wasn't that far off.

If I had been a logical child, I would have protested the needfulness of this outfit, since she had just seen fit to douse me in freezing water and that water was ten times colder than the air. But I wasn't a logical child, I was a trusting child, and she was my mother and she knew best. So I just nodded at her explanation and smiled when she said, "Good boy," to me and grabbed my hand and started walking along the bank of the stream.

We walked for a long time. My new clothes were stiff and they made walking difficult for me, but my mother was patient and there was no sign that the bad men were around, so we were in no hurray. After a while, the sun went down, but we did not stop and the temperature began to grow cold enough that I was finally thankful for my extra layers. However, my mother did not wear anything like what I had on, so I worried for her and even offered her my mittens and knitted hat for her to wear.

"No, Kenichi, you keep your clothes on. I'm fine. I have a trick to keep me warm," she told me.

Interested, I asked her, "What kind of trick? Can I see?"

Shaking her head, she said, "Not right now. We have to keep walking."

"Why?" I asked, a favorite question of mine that, of late, I had not been allowed to say.

My mother sighed and I watched, fascinated as a puff of white vapor came out of her mouth and disappeared in the air. I then noticed that my breath was doing it too, so I was making air puffs as my mother said, "Because the monastery is a couple miles ahead and I don't want to sleep in the cold if I can have a bed for the night."

"Then why aren't we running?" I asked, because it was dark out and our walking pace was way slower than she could run.

"Because you need to stretch your legs. I've been carrying you for a month now and if I keep that up, you won't be able to walk at all, because your legs will be too weak."

"Na-uh," I said back, in amazed disbelief. I had never heard of anything resulting in a person not being able to use their legs before, and I had no idea I had been close to such an outcome.

"It's true," she said in reply.

I was silent for a time, just imagining what it would be like not to be able to walk and I couldn't picture it. Walking was so natural that the idea of not walking just didn't seem possible.

"Momma?" I asked after the silence had stretched for a couple minutes and I had grown bored with the sounds of my footsteps and the pathways of my thoughts.

"Yes."

"Why are the bad men after us?" I asked, thankful to finally get the question out. I had been wondering this question for quite a long time but situations being what they were, I had not found the opportunity to ask.

With the patience of a saint, my mother said, "Because your daddy was special and they think you might be special too."

"I'm special?" I asked, excited. For the first time since the cypress tree, I forgot about how my skin hurt even though I was wearing soft fabric to protect me from the fur, and how weird it was to walk beside my mother, but not be able to feel her like I used to.

"Of course you're special. How can you not know you're special," she said, looking down at me in confusion. I just shrugged at her in answer. I had never noticed any difference in myself that made me more special than anyone else, at least, not the kind of special that my father supposedly had that caused people to come hunting for his son on the off chance that he might have that same specialness too.

My mother stopped walking and pulled me to face her. With a serious expression on her face, she said, "Kenichi, I want you to think. What do you have that no one else has?"

This was a complicated question to me. I didn't want to say something and then be called out for bragging. I had learned about bragging at the day school I had attended before my mother and I had left because the bad men were out to get me. At school, the teacher had read a story book about a person always saying they were better and that no one wanted to be friends with that person any more, because they kept bragging and sometimes those brags weren't true and then they became lies.

So, with all that in mind, I gave my mother a safe answer and said, "I don't know," knowing that now she'd have to tell me the right answer and I wouldn't get in trouble.

My plan didn't work out so well, because she snorted at me and said, "Are you stupid or just blind? Answer the question, Kenichi. Now."

Quietly, I raised a hand to my forehead and pointed at a bony protuberance at the edge of my hairline, just visible below my knitted cap. I then took off my mittens and showed her my fingernails and then I pointed at my backside.

My mother nodded and said, "Your toes and teeth, too," she said, referring to the other physical differences I had not displayed.

"Oh yeah," I said and then bared my teeth at her in an unhappy, toothy, smile. I decided that taking off my boots was too much effort to show off my toes. Besides, she knew what they looked like already.

My mother took the mittens from me and slid them back over my hands, as she said, "Your daddy looked a lot like you do, Kenichi. He had the horns circling his head, too, but his were longer and kinda yellowish. He also didn't hide his tail, but that was because he used it all the time and, where he was from, no one thought his tail was weird or called him names because of it."

"Where's that?" I asked, because I had been made fun of so often that I had stopped letting my tail hang free and had instead started wrapping it around my waist or down my leg, so it would fit in my pants and no one would be the wiser.

"Your daddy was from a shinobi clan that lived along the border of Wind and River Country. They were called the Sasori no Hitobito, the Scorpion People, because of their long tails and how they would fight with them. They were very good fighters, Kenichi, and they were very fast too. But they wouldn't listen to the Kages and they refused to join any of the villages, so they were hunted and killed until only your daddy and your granddaddy were left."

My mother looked at me then and seemed to weigh how much I was able to understand of her story and how much more she needed to tell me to satisfy my curiosity. She knew me well. You never start a story about my father and not finish it, so she smiled grimly at me and said, "I was a shinobi too, but I was a shinobi for Konohagakure no Sato, in Fire Country. I was told that I had to take a message to the last of the scorpion people and offer them a place in our village. But they wouldn't come with me. I kept trying to make them come to my village with me, but they were proud and they said they would rather die than be tied to a village system they didn't believe in."

"What'd you do then?" I asked, but my mother waved away my question.

"I fell in love with your daddy and we got married. But, Konoha heard about our marriage and sent out many more shinobi to forcefully bring back the last two of the scorpion people. They killed your grandfather, but they caught your father and they dragged him back to the village. I tried to help, but they called me a traitor and wouldn't listen."

"What's a traitor?" I asked.

"Not now Kenichi, let me finish. A man in Konoha hurt your dad very badly because he kept saying he didn't want to join the village. I snuck in to see him and he was so hurt, that he couldn't leave. But we loved each other and we wanted a baby to live on after us. So we made a baby and your daddy said if the baby's a boy, I had to name you Kenichi and if you were a girl, I had to name you Gureisu. Then your daddy died and I had to run away."

With a big breath, as though to stop herself from crying, my mother said, "The bad men want to take you away from me, but I don't want that to happen. You're my son, Kenichi, not theirs, so I won't let them have you. Do you understand?"

I waggled my hand back and forth, showing that I kind of understood what she was saying. This was a gesture I had seen the adults use before in their conversations, but it was the first time I was using it on my mother. She, apparently, thought it was funny, because she smirked humorously at me and caught my waggling hand.

"Who taught you that?" She asked as she stood up and started walking again, pulling me gently along beside her.

"I don't know," I answered, because that was the truth, as I reached around behind me and pushed the edge of my pants down, letting my long prehensile tail finally hang free.

My mother looked at me and smiled, strangely, when she said, "You better put that away. You don't want it to get frostbite and fall off, do you?"

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**Author's Note:** I hope you enjoyed chapter two. Please review. Thank you.


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